The Los Angeles Times has released just two of 18 photographs depicting U.S. soldiers posing happily next to Afghan corpses, or pieces of bodies. As with previous such incidents, the dehumanization of the “enemy” – a virtual necessity in war – runs deep.

Source: LA Times

Other unreleased photos show “Two soldiers posed holding a dead man’s hand with the middle finger raised. A soldier leaned over the bearded corpse while clutching the man’s hand. Someone placed an unofficial platoon patch reading “Zombie Hunter” next to other remains and took a picture.”

The Army of course promised to “take appropriate action” against those involved, just after reciting the same line about how this isn’t representative of the rest of the soldiers. These are hard to listen to when news of such behavior is anything but new. It’s worth noting also that the U.S. military officials the Times approached to ask questions about the photos before their release, requested they not be published. Big surprise there.

The release of the images comes at a time when the Obama administration is losing its grip on the war. The last few months have held a number of high-profile failures and embarrassments. First, a video went viral depicting U.S. soldiers urinating on Afghan corpses. After that, the controversy over the U.S. Army’s burning of Muslim holy books sparked country-wide protests and violence. Then Staff Sgt. Robert Bales (& Co.) slaughtered 17 Afghan civilians in an unprovoked massacre of men, women, and children. Just last weekend, insurgents mounted spectacular coordinated attacks that set off an 18-hour battle with NATO forces, an indication of their annual spring offensive and a public relations embarrassment for the U.S. at what seems to be the lowest point in the war.

Posing with dead, tortured Muslims or their body parts is an all-too-common exercise in the military since 9/11 – whether in the Abu Ghraib torture dungeon, the urban kill zones of Iraq, or the arid plains of blood-soaked Afghanistan. But it’s not just smiling and flashing a thumbs up for the camera, it’s killing civilians. The “Kill Team” in Afghanistan, the army unit that planned and committed executions of multiple innocent, unarmed Afghan civilians, framed the dead as having been a threat and mutilated their corpses as trophies. They also took photos of their gruesome escapades.

War requires dehumanizing some enemy. The enemy becomes not only less than human, but also the origin of all your troubles. Nazis managed to proliferate this feeling towards Jews. But its prevalent in all of America’s wars as well.

Americans became aggressively anti-German during the First World War. In 1918, for example, a mob in St. Louis attacked a German immigrant named Robert Prager, who had tried to enlist in the Navy. They beat him up, wrapped him in the American flag, and lynched him. A jury found the mob leaders not guilty, citing a case of what they called “patriotic murder.”

U.S. troops fighting the Japanese in WWII commonly mutilated their corpses, severing their body parts to take as “war trophies,” just as the Kill Team did with Afghans. One famous photograph shows a decapitated Japanese head hung on a tree after a battle with American soldiers. Crimes by both sides served to intensify the dehumanization on both sides.

Abu Ghraib, Wikipedia

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo calls this part of the Lucifer Effect. “At the core of evil,” he writes, “is the process of dehumanization by which certain other people or collectives of them, are depicted as less than human, as non comparable in humanity or personal dignity to those who do the labeling…Discrimination involves the actions taken against those others based on the beliefs and emotions generated by prejudiced perspectives.”

Dehumanization is “fundamental to a nation’s public support for war,” writes Kimberly Elliot, “Dehumanizing others renders the requisite horrors of war tolerable.” Soldiers as well as American citizens have to go through indoctrination about the strategic justifications for war, which have all but evaporated in Afghanistan, as well as indoctrination about who it is we’re fighting. That such indoctrination has to occur for the war to be fightable is a good indication that it isn’t worth another second of anybody’s life.

Update: At the Daily Beast, Harry Siegel, a war photographer who has published his own images of U.S. soldiers smiling with “war trophies,” says “these types of acts are more commonplace than we think.”

1473381 Responseshttp%3A%2F%2Fantiwar.com%2Fblog%2F2012%2F04%2F18%2Fposing-with-the-dead-dehumanizing-the-enemy%2FPosing+With+the+Dead%2C+Dehumanizing+the+%27Enemy%272012-04-18+18%3A03%3A34John+Glaserhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.antiwar.com%2Fblog%2F%3Fp%3D14733 to “Posing With the Dead, Dehumanizing the ‘Enemy’”

Dehumanizing, oh yeah. Flamethrowers and atomic bombs ala WWII the really big one, 'gook' hands and ears from the Nam. What might grandpa have to tell the young 'uns about a lei made of Vietnamese ears? Of course they would have been North Vietnamese ears and that, probably, made it all perfectly acceptable. Leaves me wondering what happened to the claymores that came back with those hands and ears.

Yes, indeed. Dehumanization is de-rigueur within the military. In fact it's mandatory. As with the IDF and it's treatment of Palestinians so it goes with them and their poodles in the American establishment to paint Iranians as unter-menschen. Ja Vohl..! Amerika und Israel uber alles!

These images don't bother me at this time. It's all been seen before. What really bothers me today is seeing images of Mr. Obama conferencing with Micky Mouse at Disneyland and singing Marvin Gay songs while taking a break here and there to assure everyone the drone program is "on a short leash"…at the same time Mitt Romney shuffles around the Country memorizing old southern sayings—practicing them with his “southern drawl” consultant in between stops on the "Mittmobile bus tour" across America pledging he’ll never, under any circumstances, "apologize for America"–even in the face of a nuclear holocaust I would presume… Even death, along with the extinction of the human species (with a few others), would be much preferable than America suffering the potential consequences of experiencing countless millennium of National shame and humiliation resulting from "apologizing". It's common knowledge that if America "apologized"…ever… for anything…for any reason…the Mullahs in Iran would immediately declare it: "Infidel Died Day"—and a new Holiday of the Islamic Republic would be born. The date would also be added to the Islamic calendar as the: "Holy Day of Triumph Over the Zionist's Paper Tiger"–which would be strictly observed as the holiest of holy-days throughout the entire Islamic world. Every year Americans would be abused with the reminder of this traumatic event with non-stop images emanating from RT showing of Millions of Iranians dancing on American flags in Tehran's Freedom Square, as slow-motion reruns of the "apology" play over and over on the Chinese donated and built jumbo-tron added to Azadi Tower…a special gift given just so the two nations could share their "special day" together. If you consider the alternatives seriously here, although it may not seem like it at first, death would really be the easy way out. Besides…it will be a quick death.

(…)
But what Mitt's domestic policy advisor obviously hasn't briefed the Mittster on is the fact: "America" already died, so this issue really isn't important on the campaign trail, and he needs to focus much more on explaining why his personal financial success, if elected, will translate into the "American people" making more money for themselves, and unveil the big plan of personally conducting free weekly seminars on leveraged buyouts and corporate restructuring from the West Wing of the White House–which will be open to the public (seating will be limited). Mitt also needs play up his born-again, deeply held, and now unwavering commitment to staunchly "protect life"…….that's a no brainier…gotta turn the dial way up on that one Mitt…

The excuse makings has began.
""This is war, and I know that war is ugly, and it's violent," Panetta said at a NATO meeting in Brussels, Belgium. "And I know that young people, sometimes caught up in the moment, make some very foolish decisions" http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/18/world/asia/afghanis….

[...] a statement issued by presidential palace less than 24 hours after the Los Angeles Times released the images, Karzai said demanded an ”accelerated and full transition of security responsibilities to [...]

I applaud the soldier who had a “conscious” and released these photos. These were taken 2 years ago & just about a month after the massacre, couple months after the Piss on “Taliban” video, Panetta still had the balls to say “this isn’t who we are, or doesn’t represent the other 99 pct”

Fox news had piece of shit lt col Ralph peters who was pissed that the pictures got published & why do people “trash” the military all the time (yea because all the parades including celebrating the IRAQ WAR is trashing), they said the times “endangers the troops” (apparently when you go to war with a gun against someone else with a gun, your barely in danger without pictures being shown)

It is amazing how many similarities there are between The USSA occupation of Afghanistan and the invasion of the Mongol Ghengis Khan into the Kwarezm Shahnate . Starting in 1218 Ghengis Khan and about 100,000 Mongols sacked all the major cities of which is now Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. It took him about 3 years to do it and he later moved on and went around the Caspian Sea to Asia Minor, but it was common also for the Mongols to build monuments out of the dead bodies of their Enemies. Once when the Mongols sacked a town in Afghanistan where the town elders surrendered and let them in the City, so Ghengis Khan had all the People of the City march out onto the plain in front of the gates only to have them surrounded by his Army, the town elders asked why, so the Mongol War Lord gave them a speech about how evil they where and the he was sent by God to punish them. The Army then killed them and made a pillar out of their bodies. Ghengis Khan had the same rational to occupy Afghanistan as we do today. We also desecrates the bodies of the dead.

Hey Count, when you decide to join the 21st century, start posting on its new inventions called computers and internet. But if you choose to live your forefathers' primitiveness you will lose this right. It is your choice boy.

It’s very easy to criticize this when it happens. It’s easy because it wrong and correct to criticize it. The soldiers in these photos don't have the luxury of debating the moral or political reasons behind what they are doing or where they happen to be. They simply have to survive. What’s important to realize is that these young men who kicked down that door and took the lives of those other people did so because if they didn’t then they would be dead. Does that make it better? No. But does it make it understandable? Yes. Caught up in the excitement which follows a life or death situation, young people can do very stupid things. This is one of them. Whether it’s right to be in Afghanistan or not has no weight in how these solders acted. For them, at that point, it was kill or be killed. And when it was over and the deafening report of .556 and .762 finished echoing through that small clay brick house, and the soldiers each did a short once of their own bodies, checking to make sure that adrenaline wasn’t trying to hide from them a gunshot wound of their own, and realizing that they were alive and riding on that wave of euphoria, they acted without thought. …….

…….It’s wrong. And it’s detrimental to the whole effort of the United States. It sparks anger in a country where everyone is already angry. These soldiers need to be punished, by the military, and then allowed to continue their careers. This won’t be that last time this happens. And it’s not a characteristic specific only to the American Serviceman. War-trophies have been around since the beginning of fighting and its spans all races, religions, and era’s of human civilization. It’s human nature, it won’t stop. Sometimes we like to think that as Americans were better than other people. After all we are the world’s super-power and we should hold ourselves to higher standards then a poor, ignorant, farm nation’s people. But I guess in the grand scheme of things we’re all the same. Animals with instincts and emotions that sometimes get the better of us. I guess all I’m trying to say is that this kind of act should be condemned but is as natural as breathing.

As natural as breathing is it ??? then a lot of your fellow Americans clearly NEED to stop breathing ! Nothing more than a bunch of BARBARIC ,MURDERING WARMONGERS . When will you lot ever learn – you are only seen nowadays as BULLY boys of the world ! Get OUT of Iraq, and Afghanistan & the DOZENS of other countries where you are NOT WANTED – GO HOME ! What a disgusting race of "humans" you are. Your heads are too far up your own arses to see REALITY ! Slowly but surely -The WORLD is seeing you for what you really are, murderers , liars and purveyors of hipocracy , at every level . Democracy is something you want to force on other nations , while you continue to abuse human rights at home in the US of A …CORRUPT SCUM !

When Carl is found dead and his wound suspiciously resembles the wounds inflicted by Japanese solidiers in the war, the medical examiner advises the sheriff to “start looking for a Jap with a bloody gun butt” and many intelligent.

I feel disgusted with what is done by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. In my opinion, what they do not reflect the attitude of a good soldier but as a psychopath. <a href="http://www.cdmcmachine.com” target=”_blank”>www.cdmcmachine.com

Treatment of victims of American troops in Afghanistan seem less human. This can be viewed from several group photos in this blog, their attitudes did not show that they are a soldier. <a href="http://www.vargasfaceandskin.com” target=”_blank”>www.vargasfaceandskin.com

But it is the military's rules of engagement in Afghanistan that is the “terrible mistake” and it is the public hand-wringing when events like these surface that provide propaganda victories to America's enemies and prolong U.S. involvement .

Urinating on dead bodies; cutting off fingers for sport; murdering women and children; night raid home invasions on civilians; and the most recent embarrassment of soldiers posing with dead body parts, are all possible during times of war because of the original lie that starts the war, which must include dehumanizing the enemy.

His images do not evoque "pride" in killing others, but a sense of loss and destruction. Young soldiers posing with dead bodies and parts of dead bodies is about dehumanizing your enemy and turning them into animals.

The latest trophy photos to emerge, obtained by the L.A. Times, show smiling soldiers posing with Afghan corpses, including two soldiers holding up a corpse's hand and extending his middle finger, and the mangled body of a suicide.

For whatever reason, circumstances in that person's life lead him to take this path. But he is still a human being and no one should pose with a picture of their dead, charred bodies as if it were a sport. It is dehumanizing. .

Next up, how does dehumanizing the faithful look? It looks bad. It looks juvenile, puerile. It looks smug and self-righteous (the very features we claim the faithful display). When I was a teenager, I knew how the world worked.

But it is the military's rules of engagement in Afghanistan that is the “terrible mistake” and it is the public hand-wringing when events like these surface that provide propaganda victories to America's enemies and prolong

Urinating on dead bodies; cutting off fingers for sport; murdering women and children; night raid home invasions on civilians; and the most recent embarrassment of soldiers posing with dead body parts, are all possible during times of war.

Urinating on dead bodies; cutting off fingers for sport; murdering women and children; night raid home invasions on civilians; and the most recent embarrassment of soldiers posing with dead body parts, are all possible during times of war because of the original lie that starts the war.

Urinating on dead bodies; cutting off fingers for sport; murdering women and children; night raid home invasions on civilians; and the most recent embarrassment of soldiers posing with dead body parts, are all possible during times of war because of the original lie that starts the war, which must include dehumanizing the enemy.

For whatever reason, circumstances in that person's life lead him to take this path. But he is still a human being and no one should pose with a picture of their dead, charred bodies as if it were a sport. It is dehumanizing.

Now every soldier has a camera, rapid photographs can be made and sent around the world, and so we have events like Abu Ghraib or the recent photographs of U.S. soldiers posing with body parts of the enemy.

Nice post. Your writing style is very beautiful and your article is very attractive. You share a very useful information that is very useful for a lot of people and it will also help for many people. Keep writing. Thanks for sharing.

Hey!!! I like the valuable information you provide in your articles. I’ll bookmark your weblog and check again here frequently. I am quite sure I will learn many new stuff right here! Best of luck for the next.

Aw, this was an extremely good post. I have Spend some time and actual effort to make a great article is appearing in the article… but what can I say… I put things off a whole lot and never seem to get nearly anything done

Your strategy is excellent the issue is certainly an problem that inadequate individuals are speaking properly about. Now i'm happy that individuals happened across this within my look for anything connected using this. rochite de fetite